December 6, 2008

(SOUTH CAROLINA) - Science fiction answers all the sticky problems that politicians, "experts," theologians, and even historians won't or can't answer. Not even theatre can discuss some of the topics that science fiction handles, although the operational functions of theatre and science fiction are similar.

Tom Clancy writes a kind of science fiction involving armaments and historical conjecture. To date, and to our knowledge, he has never written anything that has not come to pass. His guessing accuracy is even better than that of the late Arthur C. Clarke.

One of the things Tom Clancy warns about is the arrogance of the executive branch. Key to this understanding is Lord Acton's Axiom - "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and great men are [most often] bad." The understanding is that this has become an axiom because it ALWAYS happens. It happened to Clinton. It happened to W. It's even happened to Oprah. The exceptions are very few and very far between.

Governor Sanford is not an exception.

Since the inception of his terms of office, he has tried to transfer the power of the elected legislature to bureaucrats under his power. He talks of a cabinet which he appoints and the Senate should rubber-stamp.

This cannot be a healthy way to look at the will of the electorate. The Governor's intentions may be pure, but he has not thought out the unintended consequences of these ideas of his. South Carolinians do not need kings, no matter how well intentioned. People of the Palmetto State need to have as much elective access to its "princes," as Queen Elizabeth once put it, as there are princes. Indeed, it is more more preferable to have many princes, each disagreeable to the other, than to have one prince with a purpose. And to have those princes elected by ALL of their peers.

Surely, those of us who believe that government only does two things well - kill people and break things & steal money - and anything else is not guaranteed to its citizens. Hence, citizens should be very wary of any prince, with any power, whatsoever.

People of the purest intentions have seen fit to trust to government the building of roads, bridges, tunnels, and the other form of infrastructure, education. Where has it gotten us? Our roads are as bad as our schools - pitiful and in need of restructuring. But a blind person could see it. And the answer is not the consolidation of the powers of road building and education. A perfect example of this is the Education Secretary, Jim Rex. He has done nothing but sing the same liberal song that educators love and experience has taught us doesn't work. His greatest result, recently praised, was that state schools didn't screw up as much as last year! Imagine! Yet, we can kick him out of office in the coming election, and he has very little power. If he were a gubernatorial cabinet member, there is no telling what mischief he could do to the state, his being accountable to just one person.

Then there's the state social services. No one misunderstands those more than Governor Sanford and his acolytes. Of course those departments waste money, in their eyes. Why, indeed, should people travel? Other than, of course, the need to have in-home services, which is precisely what these services are supposed to do. Why, indeed, should they have all those classes for teachers - FREE OF CHARGE? Except that free education, to benefit the Special Education teachers of the state, is part of the chartered purpose of those departments. Or maybe it might just have to do with the fact that some of Sanford's biggest contributors don't like some of those social services because they didn't get treated specially, like the rich and influential people they thought themselves to be?

Sanford and his people also don't have a clue about the importance of the State's higher education system to the economic success of the State. Instead they talk about exorbitant college travel budgets, not knowing that travel is absolutely critical to high-level research and national certification. Are we no longer going to study the archeology of the Upstate? Are we no longer going to have our outstanding state colleges be certified among the family of national colleges? Is this some sophomoric attempt at doing away with public state colleges? Or do they just want to keep poor people from accessing the very system that could pull them out of being poor? Isn't this kind of knee-jerk lunacy an extension of Acton's Axiom? How can any thinking person say no?

And this is only the surface. How do we actually know that Sanford's puppet, in the Treasurer's office, is really giving an true assessment on the outlook of possible income to the State? We have businesses coming INTO the state when other states are losing businesses and jobs - businesses and jobs, by the way which were enticed here by some of that "profligate spending." There's something fishy going on in the Treasurer's office. Things are all too comfortable between the Treasurer's and the Governor's offices, too. Before we get all huffed-up about the lack of funds because of all the "profligate spending," maybe we should look at who's doing the guessing and the counting.

In any case, a mule's behind has as many facets as there are people to view it. The only similarity between the views is that they're all, still, looking at a mule's behind.

- Dick Anderson